Book Review: Love, Sex & Deception

Published on July 11, 2010

Love, Sex & Deception is a book that provides online dating advice with a unique approach: instead of listing rules and guidelines they offer advice through the telling of others’ online dating stories. A few samples of these stories include the following:

• A story of two friends who find out the same man is sending them the same poetry and decide to have some fun with him but showing up together when next meeting him.
• How a woman ruined a date by blatantly (yet unnecessarily) revealing she was using a push-up bra
• A story that highlights why jumping into marriage can be a very painful prospect
• A man who explained to his date that he was divorced without ever revealing that he was also now remarried

The stories are broken into different categories (chapters) and include things like stories about online dating scams, dates from hell, dates who lie and manners when dating.

Who Would Enjoy This Book?

Overall, I found this book interesting and at points amusing but its non-traditional approach to advice makes it better for some singles than others. I see this book best serving those who are comfortable with dating and who are already finding dates. I recommend this because the book generally follows this format:

1. Each chapter starts out with some general advice based on the current topic
2. A story is told, normally as the date or relationship is beginning
3. At the end of the story, the authors then offer advice based on how the single handled the situation (although some stories end without additional advice)
4. More stories are told, again following the format described above

Concentrating on stories is a unique approach to online dating advice and can be entertaining. If you find reading others’ experiences interesting or helpful then it almost goes without saying that you could enjoy this book.

However, since the book is based on real dates the advice tends to begin at the point where the singles are already on their dates. Because of this, it provides little advice on improving methods for finding dates online or for working with different online dating services. This is something worth keeping in mind: if you are brand new to online dating, it is unlikely that this would be the first dating advice you would want to read. That being said, in some cases, telling stories to offer advice may provide a stronger way of delivering the advice than the more “traditional” methods. In particular, Chapter 7 which covers stories where people experience different dating scams, actually hearing how these scams work from the people who have experienced them makes the advice seem that much more effective.

Additionally, many of the stories themselves are racy, sometimes without adding a whole lot of advice. As a man, I don’t find myself frequently reading Cosmopolitan but I have picked it up from time to time when it has been on a coffee table within reach. Many of these stories reminded me of something I might see in the “Reader Submissions” section of a publication like that. That is to say, the stories can be entertaining but also surprisingly revealing and at times the story tellers can come off as shallow (especially some of the guys). It doesn’t make the stories bad but it might cause some of the chapters to be categorized as “guilty pleasure” reading. For example, in Chapter 6 which is “Online Frenzy of Love or Lust?”, a man talks for several pages about his sexual prowess and then his story just sort of ends. It isn’t clear what the reader is to take away from the story as far as advice goes. There is plenty of advice apparent in most stories but others are voyeuristic without much else.

Final Thoughts

The book is an easy to read because it is broken down into short, individual stories. Overall, I would categorize this book a mix of entertaining/interesting stories with some advice thrown in. I think many singles would find the book engaging but not all would find it helpful, especially those new to the online dating game. I would have also liked to see each chapter include a few success stories to show those who got things right. Many chapters did this but as someone who is frequently arguing that online dating is worth the time and effort it takes, I wouldn’t have minded seeing additional stories that back this up!

Finally, if you are the type of person who enjoys the “guilty pleasure” reading of seeing into other peoples’ lives (sometimes with intimate details) you could enjoy this book, even if you weren’t dating online.

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